Qualitative Audience Research Focus Group

Although the quantitative audience survey was helpful in understanding my demographic I still had to get a better idea of what my audience were specifically looking for in a magazine. I showed a group of 10 people who represented my demographic some templates I had created and asked them to give their opinions on them, stating what they liked and did not like and reasons why. The majority of my focus group said that they like the templates that I had done in blue and red. Further questioning revealed that they thought it would be better suited if I combined these colours and used a colour scheme of red, blue and white. It was decided that the masthead should be black and the feature stories a mixture of blues and reds all of the same hue to ensure the magazine still looked appealing. They liked the idea of the cover story spanning across the main image as they thought this was different and striking. Also, they thought that I could inclue more feature stories as otherwise it seemed that there may be blank spaces which would make my magazine seem empty and not as though it is bursting with content. My focus group found the positioning of content on my magazine unappealing and instead said they would prefer the title: contents to tun down the right side of the page and then the text and image positioned in the rest of the available space. I felt this was a valid point and so decided to follow their advice and make another template depciting this. The double page spread was the most agreed on page. The focus group largely liked what I had done and the position of text was appealing to them. However, they also came up with some different ideas for where to situate the images. The idea of the main image on the left page towards the right was accepted yet they did not like the idea of the smaller images as they found them distracting and pointless. It was so decided that to give my magazine a rougher edge I would copy and paste sections on black tape from Google and arrange them around the image to make it appear as though it has hastily been stuck down. Also, I was to use another image on the left page; one of the model conveying a different emotionto what was shown on the right page. They also stated that the position of my quote should be more in the centre of the columns of text as this is what they had seen in other magazines.